Pareidolia (from Greek para- amiss, faulty, wrong + eidolon, diminutive of eidos appearance, form) is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (usually an image) being mistakenly perceived as recognizable. Common examples include images of animals or faces in clouds, seeing the man in the moon, and hearing messages on records played in reverse. The human being has become "hard-wired" to identify the human face, for unresponsive infants tended to be ignored or abandoned, as Carl Sagan noted in The Demon-Haunted World. (Source: Wikipedia) ...

In Canada, you can spell patriotism with two 'U's: Humour. In Canada, we like to make jokes about, roughly, three kinds of things: 1) Canada and Canadian, 2) the United States, and Americans, and 3) just about anything else. In that order. Canadians especially love to make fun of Americans misunderstanding Canadians (combining 1 and 2). As Will Ferguson wrote in Why I Hate Canadians, Canadians love to be misunderstood, or unrecognized. Canadians go on about the fact that Americans pay us no attention, and mostly don't know much about us. But if they did, one of Canada's greatest ...

A long time ago, before Jesus walked the Earth, God commanded of his followers that they may only eat things that live in the water if they have fins. [God said] "‘These you may eat of all that are in the waters: whatever has fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, that you may eat. All that don’t have fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of all the living creatures that are in the waters, they are an abomination to you, and you detest them. You shall not eat of their flesh, and you shall detest their ...

Growing up I've heard a lot of people who are really worried talk about the lack of Canadian patriotism. Once a young lady at university told me that it's disgusting that Canadians only get patriotic during our beer commercials. And you know what, I bought all of it. The trouble is, it's not true. Sure, we can look at our beer commercials and say "that's patriotism". We can also say that it is unusual, we don't get much hardcore patriotism on TV or in general in Canada. But how do we know that is patriotism? Mostly, because it resembles what Americans do to be patriotic. It seems an ...